Now that I have to live without Fruit Menu (nothing Unsanity writes is yet Leopard-compatible) I found myself missing a cascading System Preferences menu.

To replicate it, I made a folder and dragged in aliases to all my frequently used preference panes. The panes are located in each of these locations (for some reason, some panes appear multiple places):

~/Library/Preference Panes

/Library/Preference Panes

/System/Library/Preference Panes

I created a folder (I keep it in my home directory, but it can be anywhere) called System Preferences to hold these aliases, and I dragged that folder to the right side of the Dock. Lo and behold, a cascading System Preferences menu. Right-clicking on the Stack lets you decide if it should be a fan or a grid (though a fan is limited in how many icons it shows).

The icon of a Stack is literally a stack of the icons of the first few items in the folder; in my case, it was the layered icons for the preference panes for Accounts, Appearance, and Bluetooth. I found that ugly so I made an alias to the System Preferences application itself in the folder, too. I put a space at the start of this new alias's name so it would alphabetize first. Now the icon for the Stack is still a stack, but the top icon on the stack is System Preferences itself.

This is cool (although I normally use Quicksilver to open prefs). It would be even niftier if the grid view would use the application icon rather than the composite pref icon. When it first opens you see the native icon for a blink then it changes.

This discovery shows real promise for what else might be hidden away in stacks. The recent items one appears to have no view options though - wouldn't mind having it as a fan as the grid appears so large, but it doesn't respond to a 'showas' argument in the .plist. Any other way this might be adjustable?

I get stymied trying to make aliases in /System/Library/Preference Panes. I got around this by doing command line stuffs.

I made a folder, then to terminal, cd'ed into that folder, and typed:

for i in `ls /System/Library/PreferencePanes/`; do ln -s $i . ; done

and I got all my shiny aliases. I've done this to get aliases out of other hard to reach places, as well. Oddly enough, the Finder won't let you make aliases in folders, not even with a password, not even if you try to drag it out of there (it copies in that case).

I didn't make the aliases IN the preference panes folders; I just held down option and command and dragged the .prefpane files to my newly created folder. I don't recall being asked to authenticate once.

When I do that, it copies the PrefPanes. Then when I double click one it just opens the Sytem Preferences program but does not go to the specific prefpane (opening "Appearances" or any of them take you to the main menu).

What I did find to work simply dragging /System/Library/PreferencePanes to the dock, no permissions required. It's ugly (all the icons change into "document" style icons) and I did take advantage of my administrative powers to put a file labeled "_icon" in the folder, giving it the same icon as System Preferences program. But this won't work if you have prefpanes elsewhere on your system.

Or you can make a Smart Folder.
In the Finder, got to File and New Smart Folder
Just add to the criteria File Extension is prefpane
and System Files include

And there will be listed all your prefpanes.
You can save this smart folder and add it to your sidebar, or to the Dock (although adding a smart folder to the dock will just open the finder window and not do stacks)

I had installed PrefsMenu, but discovered I wasn't using it much because there were only a few System Preference Panes I actually use frequently and it was almost as much of a hassle to dig thru all the PrefsMenu choices as to find them in System Preferences. And PrefsMenu was yet another login item.

I did this instead: Logged in as root, which allowed me to create aliases of the desired preference panes located in /System/Library/Preference Panes. Dragged the aliases out of the system folder into new folder and dragged the new folder to the dock. If desired, you can find the icon for the preference pane by right-clicking on it and showing the package contents. The icon is in the Resources folder.

I know this is an old post, but after trying this hint, my dock disappeared and I cant seem to get it back again, I tried the killall Dock to try to restart it and restarted my mac several times but I can't seem to find it...now whenever I use any programs its really slow and always has the mac wheel spinning :/ I've had my mac for a year now but still a newbie when it comes to mac/apple so any help would be appreciated -__-